“Freda,” the girl replied quietly, half hiding behind her mother.
“She’s normally not so shy,” Sonia explained. “But it was a shock for her, poor Buster having to go to hospital. I’m sure she’ll be talking at full volume again very soon.”
Tara got the message and tried to engage Ellie some more. The little girl gradually opened up with Anita’s help. They established that Tara was American, studied distant stars and planets, and played a mean game of snakes and ladders.
“I’m not much of an artist, though,” Tara said, pointing at drawings fixed to the door of the refrigerator. “But I really like the dinosaurs. What’s this one?”
“Anky-lossarus!” Ellie said instantly.
“Show Tara your big dinosaur book,” Sonia suggested. “And it is ankylosaurus, I think. We must pronounce correctly!”
Tara was soon in the lounge, bonding with the little girl over science, while Anita talked to Sonia and Tim in the kitchen. Tara, recalling her own childhood obsession with space, made suitable noises and asked questions. Ellie’s enthusiasm about long-extinct reptiles was supercharged by having someone new to lecture. Her shyness soon disappeared.
Tara found that dinosaur research had progressed a lot since her school days. In turn, she explained some of her own astrophysical research as best she could. Inevitably, when Tara talked about hunting for planets beyond our solar system, Ellie asked about aliens.
“Well,” Tara said, “soon we’ll be able to find out whether planets have oxygen in their atmospheres. And that means we’ll know there are plants because they produce lots of oxygen. And where there are plants, there are animals.”
Ellie nodded thoughtfully, drawing a huge palmlike tree next to a brontosaurus. Tara asked the girl how she liked Haslam House. Ellie shrugged and said it was all right.
Then she remembered something that should have happened when they arrived. Something good.
“I think Auntie Anita may have brought you a gift,” she said, during a brief lull in Ellie’s dino-monologue.
This got the expected reaction. Ellie leaped up from the floor and scurried out of the room so fast that Tara had to rush after her. Luckily, the girl didn’t collide with anything, apart from Anita.
“Tara says you got me a present!”
Anita duly took her niece upstairs for the big reveal while Tara chatted with the Garlands and studied some of the drawings on the refrigerator. One of the non-dino pictures caught her eye. It showed people standing outside a red square building that was presumably Haslam House. There was a yellow-haired figure, obviously Sonia, a dark-haired one that was clearly Tim, and a smaller third person that must have been Ellie. Trixie was represented by a wiggly brown outline and an oversized red tongue. But in one window of the house was another person, evidently female, with a downturned mouth.
“Who’s this?” Tara asked, pointing.
Tim peered at the picture and shrugged.
“That’s the lady—she doesn’t have a name, apparently,” he said. “She crops up sometimes. A kind of imaginary friend, I suppose. Although she seems rather unpleasant. More of an imaginary acquaintance.”
Tara nodded and looked at the other drawings. The mysterious lady featured in a couple of other drawings. She was always at a window, never outside Haslam House. Tara seized the chance to ask the obvious question.
“So, is this place haunted? Anita said people think it is, but what do you think?”
Tim laughed but not very heartily. Sonia looked down into her coffee mug and shrugged.
“Some people think it is spooky, I guess. Some locals won’t come here to work. There are stories. People talk in the pub. But I have seen nothing.”
“Me neither,” Tim said. “Never noticed any mysterious figures walking through walls.”
Tara studied the drawings some more while mulling over what the couple had said—and what they had not.
“You’ve seen nothing,” she said, looking Sonia in the eye. “Okay, but have you felt anything? Heard anything? Sensed something unusual?”
The Garlands seemed uncomfortable. Sonia, again, took the lead.
“There are sounds, sometimes. Creaks and bumps, but we think that is the effect of temperature changes, right? And this house has some cold spots, even in this warm weather. The lounge, where you were with Ellie? There was a cold spot in the middle one evening. And there is an old narrow staircase to the attic, sometimes it is very cold, too. It is weird.”
“And we’ve all smelled burning,” Tim put in. “Just a hint of it, all over the house, at odd times. Very worrying in an old building, of course. But we’ve checked everything, there’s no sign of an electrical fault or anything that might cause it. So, yes, it is weird.”
“But not enough to drive you away?” Tara asked.
Sonia shrugged.
“I am from Ukraine—I saw a lot of bad things as a girl. I survived and made a new life in a new country. And we cannot afford to just walk away because the house is spooky.”
Tim concurred.
“We got it cheap, yes, but it’s still a country house. Most of our capital is sunk into it. Like most people our age, we have damn all savings to fall back on. We can’t just walk away.”
Tara saw the logic in that. She wished she hadn’t seen dozens of horror movies where people said much the same thing. So she tried to put a positive spin on the situation instead.
“Saying a place is haunted can be an attraction,” Tara pointed out. “If it’s known to the locals, why not bite the bullet and make it a feature, not a bug? Advertise it as haunted when you sell.”
The couple looked dubious.
“Wouldn’t we need an actual ghost story?” Tim asked. “You know, the tragic tale behind the haunting? We couldn’t find anything.”
“Good point!” Tara said. “I’ll do some digging into the history. If that’s okay with you?”
She watched Sonia’s hand stray to the tiny gold cross that hung from a chain around her throat. Tara asked if she was a Catholic.
“Greek Catholic, it is a Ukrainian church,” Sonia said. “We are a minority there, one reason for me to get out. I was not very religious back home. But now—I wish I had a priest to talk to here. This place—it is not friendly.”
“It’s also the most ambitious fix-up job we’ve done so far,” Tim said firmly. “And the sooner we finish here the better. When we first saw Haslam, we thought we might settle here. Then we moved in. No way.”
Tara nodded thoughtfully. She knew cold spots were a common paranormal phenomenon and linked to hauntings. Mortlake had shared a lot of his case notes with her. She explained that he had often found boringly mundane explanations. But, she stressed, she’d like to do some investigating, if they didn’t mind.
“Will this make it harder to get the work done?” Sonia asked at once.
“No,” Tara said firmly. “In fact, give me a scraper or a paint roller or whatever, and I’ll pitch in and help. I can ghost hunt and work at the same time. Why not?”
That was the clincher. Tara was on the fix-up squad for her two-week vacation.
***
A white van pulled up outside Haslam House while Tara was outside playing with Ellie and Trixie. Tara gently held Ellie back as the greyhound bounded toward the van, barking and leaping. The driver, a young man, slowed to a crawl for the last few yards as the dog waited, tail wagging.
“It’s Carl!” Ellie shouted for the umpteenth time as, free at last, she hurtled toward the new arrival.
“Yeah, I get that,” Tara said, watching as the builder got out.
Carl looked about twenty-five, maybe a little older, with an untidy mop of reddish-brown hair and a round clean-shaven face. He was dressed in overalls with a tool belt, but both seemed to hang loosely on his skinny frame. Likewise, his work boots seemed almost comically large. But he had, Tara decided, nice eyes and a cute smile.
“Hello!” he called to her, as he walked around the van and opened a side door. �
��I see you’ve met the menagerie!”
Tara followed in Ellie’s wake as the child zoomed up to Carl, who patiently responded to a barrage of little girl questions. He had been very busy, but yes, he had gotten her something from town. He handed Ellie a sticker book for a cartoon series, BlunderBears.
“New one to me,” Tara said, as Ellie rushed off with her prize.
“They’re bears that make blunders,” Carl explained. “It’s a big thing, whole range of toys, apparently. Cost a fortune for the whole range, as usual.”
“Ah, that explains Freda the panda,” she said. “I’m Tara, by the way.”
“Guessed you weren’t the sister,” the builder said. “No resemblance to Tim. Nice to meet you. You wouldn’t like to help me unload this stuff by any chance? I’m sure Ellie will help, but…”
As they moved paint, plaster, and assorted plumbing items, Tara explained her ghost-hunting plan and asked if Carl had had any odd experiences. He repeated what Sonia had told her about the cold stairway, the burning smell, the cold spot in the living room, and strange noises. But he added something else.
“I get this feeling I’m being watched,” he said. “Most of the time, in that place, especially if I’m alone. There’s something there, I’m sure of it. How are you going to deal with it, though? I mean, you’re not going to do an exorcism or something?”
Tara admitted that she wasn’t. Instead, she hoped to identify the nature of the haunting—whether it was a “stone tape” ghost or a purposeful ghost. Then she would consult with a real expert from Cambridge as to how to proceed. Carl seemed impressed but unclear as to why there were two kinds of haunting. As they stored supplies in a spare room, she tried to explain the difference between the two.
“The stone tape theory,” she said, “holds that some significant event in this house is echoing down to us through time—like a recording of powerful emotions burned into the fabric of the building.”
Carl leaned against a doorjamb and frowned in thought.
“So that sort of spook is just like a film or something—mindless, no way to talk to them?”
“Right,” she said. “But purposeful ghosts, they really do seem to be spirits of the dead—or disembodied minds, call them what you like. They’re supposed to have unfinished business of some kind. You can communicate with them. This professor I know, he’s done it. He’s helped them move on by dealing with their issues.”
Carl seemed doubtful.
“Communicate? Well, I wish you’d tell them to sod off and stop giving me the creeps. That feeling of being watched—hard to believe it’s just a recording causing that. And poor old Buster—I’ll bet his heart trouble was made worse by this place...”
Tara was about to ask about Buster when a noise like distant thunder sounded above them. They stepped out into the corridor in time to see Anita reach the bottom of the staircase. Anita looked around, saw Tara and Carl, and put on her most dazzling smile. She had clearly spent a lot of time getting ready, though her outfit was minimalist in the amount of flesh it covered.
“Here she is,” Tara whispered to the young man. “Brace yourself.”
***
“A game?” asked Monty Carrington. “Like a chessboard?”
Mortlake nodded and took a sip of his lemonade. They were in the garden of the Lamb and Flag, a Cambridge pub much frequented by lecturers. This was, in part, because of the good food and pleasant ambiance. It was also notably devoid of students at this time of year, when most were on vacation.
“I got the impression,” Mortlake said, flipping through his notebook, “that it was like a chessboard but had more squares. It was downright disconcerting. I’ve had my fair share of odd experiences but never anything quite like yesterday’s—well, whatever it was.”
“And you’ve never dreamed about this game board?” Monty asked.
“Not that I recall,” Mortlake said.
Monty sipped his pint of stout and mulled over his friend’s story. Then he looked around the beer garden. It was almost deserted at the moment, during the mid-afternoon lull. The old man shrugged.
“Perhaps I can set your mind at rest,” he said. “If I give you a quick reading.”
Mortlake felt uncomfortable. Monty’s power of postcognition had made the man’s life difficult. He never asked him to use it. It was a kind of ritual dance between them, whereby Mortlake laid out a case and Monty decided if he would offer what he called a “reading.” It was a very mild term for a tsunami of images and feelings.
“If you’re sure, old chap,” Mortlake said. “It might merely confirm I had a dizzy spell because I’m getting on a bit.”
Monty nodded and put down his glass. Then he laid one hand casually on the table, palm up. Mortlake reached over and laid the tips of his three longest fingers onto the pale palm. Monty jerked slightly, and his eyes lost focus. He was used to Mortlake’s mind, having been exposed to it many times. But the process was still troublesome, a deluge of sensory impressions.
“Enough,” said Monty, and Mortlake lifted his hand.
The whole process had taken about three seconds.
“Well?” Mortlake asked.
Monty smiled, took off his half-moon spectacles, and polished them.
“Still dreaming about her, eh?”
Mortlake stared into his lemonade, which was rapidly losing its fizz.
“It’s been much more frequent, lately,” he admitted. “It started around the same time as the Lord Gonfallon case, in fact. And it’s getting more intense, crazier.”
Monty looked as if he was about to say more about Cassandra, but then he changed tack. He confirmed that Mortlake had experienced something bizarre the previous morning. There was a definite sense of pieces in a vast game.
“Perhaps other people have felt this,” the old man added. “Maybe it’s something to do with the square itself.”
Mortlake had wondered about that, too. It wouldn’t be the first time that building work or refurbishment had triggered a paranormal event. Especially in Cambridge. In their early days, he and Monty had tackled a few psychic disturbances.
“Remember the Lecherous Monk?” he reminisced. “Terrible antics for a holy man. Until he turned up, our beach volleyball team were set to qualify for the nationals.”
They chuckled over their first relatively simple cases. Back then, they had been lecturer and student, Professor Carrington indulging young Marcus as he pushed the boundaries of paranormal investigation. Then things had become more serious. Love and death had arrived in quick succession.
“None of it was your fault,” Monty said simply.
“Or all of it was,” Mortlake replied. “Not taking Crowe seriously enough. Not seeing the threat. I mean, the man had a cult following—dozens of lost and confused people in a state of perpetual arrested adolescence.”
Monty gently but insistently returned to the dizzy spell of the morning. He suggested that they amble over there—it was only ten minutes’ walk, after all—and see if either of them had a reaction. Mortlake agreed. Monty finished his pint and they left, strolling through Cambridge on a pleasant summer afternoon.
“We might almost be tourists,” Mortlake remarked.
“No, we’re not gawping at fine buildings just because they’re old,” Monty pointed out. “Also, I feel no urge to take a selfie with you—or anyone else. We are locals. Not to mention curmudgeonly old farts.”
They reached the square by the Senate House. Yet for a moment, Mortlake had the weird impression that they had somehow taken a wrong turn. The scene was familiar enough, certainly. The problem was, it was too familiar. The checkerboard pattern of black-and-white squares was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the square was paved with the same gray stone slabs as before.
“Well, this is a bit of a puzzler,” Monty remarked. “I distinctly saw that odd game board in your memory, old chap. If that’s any consolation.”
“Not really,” Mortlake said, feeling his throat constricting with stress. “I
think I need another little sit-down.”
They took their places on the same bench Mortlake had sat on that morning. He asked Monty if he had received any other post-cognitive impressions.
“Well, I got just a hint of something strange, unpleasant, a kind of aftertaste,” the old man admitted. “A hint of malevolence, and a cunning mind behind it. I had the distinct sense of being watched. But not by Cassandra, in case you’re wondering. This was someone else. Or something else.”
Mortlake stared down at the slabs of weatherworn stone as if they might somehow yield an answer and said nothing for a while.
Chapter 4
Anita was in full flirt mode during her first encounter with Carl, but the cheerful workman did not seem especially impressed. He was friendly enough, but that was it. Anita, who had gone for skimpy summer clothes that left little to the imagination, seemed miffed at not being drooled over. She giggled and jiggled, flicked her hair back, and fluttered her eyelashes. Carl joked around a little but kept working. He was clearly a man not easily distracted.
Eventually, Anita gave up and made a face behind Carl’s back. Tara, who had seen this pattern before on many occasions, wondered when her friend would imply Carl was gay. She gave it five minutes, max.
“Nice lad, but I think he might bat for the other team,” whispered Anita two minutes later, as they watched Carl head out to his van for more supplies.
“And there it is,” Tara said cheerily. “A bit trigger-happy with the judgment there, girlfriend. Maybe he’s just the quiet type and doesn’t want your boobs wobbling in his face like rogue blancmanges. Or maybe he has a girlfriend and he’s the loyal type.”
House of Whispers: Supernatural Suspense with Scary & Horrifying Monsters (Mortlake Series Book 2) Page 5